"Even though it was the height of summer, there was a coolness and a tranquility, a darkness and almost a dampness that was really very particular."

Photograph by Jim Stephenson

The pavilion also featured a circular pool, which formed the roof of the structure. It was supported by a series of twelve cork-lined columns, which represented the twelve pavilions that had been built on the site up to that point.

Photograph by Iwan Baan

"You had this great dish on top, which is where the ducks came to swim," Peyton-Jones says. "So there was this higher level and this lower level, and you were like the jam in the sandwich compressed between the two."

Photograph by Jim Stephenson

The project reunited the Swiss architects and Chinese artist after their successful collaboration on the Beijing National Stadium – dubbed the Bird's Nest – for the Beijing Olympics four years earlier.

"2012 was the year of the London Olympics, so we decided to invite Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei to collaborate again for the first time since Beijing," Peyton-Jones explains. "We Skyped with Ai Weiwei, who was still unable to leave China."

Photograph by Iwan Baan

Previous Serpentine Gallery Pavilion commissions went to architects that had not yet built in England. Herzog & de Meuron's Tate Modern gallery in London was completed in 2000, but Peyton-Jones felt that reuniting such a successful partnership was a good reason to relax the usual rules.

Photograph by Iwan Baan

"There wasn't a need for the British public to see the work of Herzog & de Meuron, because of course it's very well represented by Tate Modern," she says.

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